Planes were parked up for months when the pandemic hit. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Three years ago this weekend, any doubts about how hard aviation would be slammed by Covid-19 were put to rest.
On March 19, 2020, this country closed its borders to all but New Zealand citizens and permanent residents, and airlines that were already scaling back routes as quickly as possible cut them completely.
That day Air New Zealand announced the closure of its crew base in London, and a few days later said it would cut its international capacity by 95 per cent. Airline and airport shares tanked around the world as aviation faced its worst commercial crisis.
At Auckland Airport, the low point for passenger numbers came on May 25, when there were no international passengers at all.
“Literally, no one came or went from the country that day,” says the airport’s chief customer officer, Scott Tasker.
Five months earlier, reports of a mystery virus in Wuhan, China developed quickly in concentric circles around the world. Tasker says the hope was it would be like the SARs respiratory virus almost 20 years earlier, and could be contained.
“We thought it’s concerning, it will be brought under control, there’ll be some restrictions put on China ... and then of course, things rolled from there.”
Air New Zealand’s evacuation flight from Wuhan landed on February 5, resulting in the rollout of health protocols at the airport
“Suddenly we had to sort of think about infection control and how to protect our people. This new language and processes started to come very quickly at us.”
On February 28, New Zealand’s first case of Covid was reported. Two weeks later, the Government announced that anyone entering New Zealand must self-isolate for 14 days, except those arriving from the Pacific.
“From our perspective, that’s when we realised that this was really serious for aviation, travel and tourism. And this is extremely serious for the future of our business,” says Tasker.
“We quickly realised following closure of the border, the falling away of the network, the lockdown (on March 25) that we needed to move quite quickly to take the steps that we needed to ensure the future of Auckland Airport.”
By April 6 the airport company was under way with a $1.2 billion secondary market equity raise – at that time New Zealand’s biggest.
That was to strengthen the balance sheet and ensure the company could get through what it thought could be a year or two of significant disruption.
“And unfortunately, that was the case,” says Tasker.
During the average month in 2019 there were 29 airlines flying through Auckland to 43 destinations, with capacity of anywhere from 900,000 to 1 million international seats per month. This dropped to 61,000 seats capacity by June, 2020.
In February, 2021, just before the short-lived transtasman bubble, there were only 14 airlines operating to 25 destinations with 4 per cent of the old international passenger volume. By February last year, just before international visitors were welcomed back, this had dropped to 12 airlines to 21 destinations with just 39,000 international passengers.
Early in the pandemic, the airport had to lay off close to 40 per cent of its staff, many through video calls.
“Who would ever have thought that you’d find yourself in a position of having to do something that horrific,” says Tasker. “We had to say goodbye to a large number of amazing colleagues.”
The airport was on the front line of what became a humanitarian challenge, as with just a few scheduled passenger services, there were tens of thousands of foreign nationals stranded here in the middle of a global health crisis.
“Countries realised that they had lots of internationals stranded in New Zealand - a remote country that had a significantly depleted network.” Between the end of February and the end of July, there were about 27,000 foreign travellers exiting through Auckland Airport, many aboard special repatriation flights.
Airlines including Lufthansa, Swissair, Austrian Airlines and Air India made special flights to Auckland. The French Air Force turned up with an A400M military plane to repatriate people to French Polynesia.
Tasker says the Government’s support for aviation through close to $1 billion in freight subsidies was crucial in keeping airlines here.
“There was a great sense of pride in our people for being able to be right on the core of, enabling Kiwis to get home during that pandemic and ensuring that exports could get out and the essential imports in.”
The strong recovery of the domestic market, when the nationwide lockdown and subsequent Auckland lockdowns ended, was critical. “Domestic was absolutely a lifeline for our business to the tourism industry. Our border was pretty firmly closed, but Kiwis could start moving around the country again and then we had this domestic tourism boom which was brilliant.”
That was then.
The re-opening of borders to New Zealanders almost a year ago, and then to the rest of the world by October, changed everything.
During summer, international capacity rebounded to around 70 per cent of pre-Covid levels.
Last month 23 airlines were back flying to 35 destinations. With 90 per cent of domestic flights back, all up there is a 78 per cent recovery of total capacity.
“We certainly did our best to position ourselves for airlines to come back and look, and it’s pleasing. For example, if we look at this summer we’ve had a healthy rebound out of North America, in particular,” says Tasker.
Hawaiian Airlines resumed Honolulu flights from last July, Air New Zealand launched its non-stop flights to New York in September, American Airlines returned to this country with flights from Dallas Fort Worth, United flew daily from San Francisco over summer and Air Canada flew with greater frequency than before the pandemic. Next summer, Delta Air Lines will fly daily between Auckland and Los Angeles. ‘’It’s a good rebuild from a year ago when we really first started opening,” says Tasker.
“If we look at this summer, we’ve had a healthy rebound out of North America in particular, and that’s great to see.”
Over the next six weeks, capacity between Auckland and China is ramping up, with China Southern, China Eastern and Air New Zealand adding flights.
“One of the really important things is, New Zealand has been approved by the Chinese government as one of the initial tranche of 20 countries approved for group destination travel,” says Tasker. “That will certainly help fill up those flights. And I think the timing of China opening and the Chinese airlines starting to ramp back up, kind of from March onwards, is great timing because we’ll have that drop-off of the seasonal or North American services.”
Over the Tasman, prices have been sky-high and during summer capacity was around 80 per cent of pre-Covid levels. With Virgin Australia confining its services only to Queenstown, Air New Zealand and Qantas have had 90 per cent of the market.
Rebounding travel meant Auckland Airport last month reported its first underlying profit in two-and-a-half years and most airlines have surged back into the black.
The surge in travel has meant a bumpy experience for travellers, and Tasker says this may last for up to a year. Staff shortages at airlines, among ground handlers and other parts of the aviation system – at a time of high demand – have at times meant airport chaos and lost bags here and overseas.
Bad weather here and abroad has compounded schedule problems for airlines and meant misery for travellers.
Tasker says the hope is that processing will improve next summer. ‘’We do expect it to rumble on probably for another eight to 12 months unfortunately”.
One route had three times the average rate of cancellations.